


She Let Them Go

by prrincessyue



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Goodbyes, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-30 12:05:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12108354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prrincessyue/pseuds/prrincessyue
Summary: Kanna thinking about what letting Katara and Sokka leave the South Pole would mean, and why she let them go.





	She Let Them Go

Perhaps she wouldn't have let them go.

Perhaps Kanna wouldn't have let them go, had she not seen so _much_ in them. Passion in her little Waterbender's eyes that she'd never really been able to let out, and a noble bravery in her grandson's poise, protectiveness that he'd finally be able to bestow- that he'd _better_ bestow on his sister. 

And herself. In both of them, she saw her young self, chained somewhere they could no longer grow. There was so much they'd never experience, a life they'd never live if they stayed in their charming little village.

Still, surely she wouldn't have let them go had she not done it once herself. If, despite the hardships and challenges, despite some things she'd seen and _because_ of other things she'd seen, it hadn't been the best thing she'd ever done. 

She'd travelled halfway around the world, from the North to the South, and now her grandchildren's journey would mirror hers in ways she couldn't quite foresee. It would eventually be from the _South_ to the _North,_ she knew _,_ with eachother and the young boy who she knew was the Avatar. She knew that so much more, an adventure impossibly larger than they'd ever known and that they could'nt have ever imagined awaited them. It would largely be for the world, which made them so much better than her. 

But it would also be a family journey, and a personal one, and so nonetheless the essence of it would be the same as the path she'd walked so long ago. 

They needed this. She understood in a way you could only understands first hand. She had a feeling she wasn't even _letting_  them go, so much as giving them her blessing on a choice they would make regardless, but even still that was a luxury that she had not had. 

A war going on might have been enough to sway her the other way, except that it hadn't done so when it had been her. And this was not only the war's time; it was her grandchildren's, too.

Ofcourse, because she was letting the two most important childrenin her life _(_ because they were only _children_ , weren't they _?)_ venture with no guidance into such a war-stricken world, into something so uncertain that even she couldn't guess at, it would be impossible not to feel guilt and doubt, if only after the fact. Maybe she should had told them her story and shared with them the wisdom she gained, but this was _their_ story to experience, those were their lessons to learn. 

As she stood wrapped in furs like the ones Katara and Sokka would shed for the first time on their travels and watched them set off on the bison, she could only feel pride - her determined little Waterbender and Warrior, so quickly to be turned heroes. 

Perhaps she wouldn't have let them go, she knew. But she never once thought that perhaps she _shouldn't_ have let them go. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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